Omake Week 2024, Day 6

The crows that hang out in the park near our home have been a source of happiness during the tough times this year (my wife and I are both very fond of corvids). Justice for crows!

~X X X~

Duran-kun and Kiyo-chan's Omake Theater

(featuring the Tokiha, Minagi, and Munakata family pets)

"Hey, Mikoto, everybody, I'm home!" Mai Tokiha announced as she walked into her dorm apartment. It had been a long day for the third-year, between college planning and her actual classes, but despite being tired she also found herself actually looking forward to the evening. Mikoto was having a study group with Shiho and Arika, and Mai found it genuinely relaxing to prepare food for a group. Maybe it was growing up with just her little brother, but she'd found that she really enjoyed being surrounded by a big group of friends, and it energized rather than tired her to look after them.

(Though they could darned well clean up after themselves and help with the dishes. Mai's mom impulses only went so far.)

She'd expected some kind of response—at the very least, Mikoto hurling herself face-first into her chest with a squeal—but she could have heard crickets chirping, it was so quiet.

There was a single caw, but it was soft. Maybe the crow didn't want to drown out any crickets who might have had something to say.

"Yatagarasu?"

Shiho's crow flapped out of the living room and perched on a coatrack peg.

"Where is everybody?" Mai asked as she changed out of her shoes.

Yatagarasu cawed.

"Ah. Right, you're a bird. I don't suppose any of them left a note?"

He shook his head.

"But they all went out together? Even Kagutsuchi and Miroku?"

This time, he nodded. Explanations were not his forte, but he did very well with yes/no questions. Especially considering that he was a crow, but then the CHILDs were more intelligent than regular animals, probably due to whatever bond linked them to their HiME's character and emotions.

(An ungracious person might have complimented Yatagarasu on being every bit as bright as regular crows despite being linked to Shiho's character and emotions, but Mai was not as ungracious as, say, an author of comedy fanfiction might be.)

"And they're not in trouble, right? I mean, they went out on their own, they didn't get dragged off by the cops or a teacher or Nao or something?"

Again he shook his head.

"All right, then," she sighed. "I guess I'd better get started on dinner. I know I'm a little early, but I can use the time to do something a little fancier than I'd originally intended."

She rolled up her sleeves and headed to the kitchen. Half an hour later, the smells of stir-frying meat, the spices from soup stock, and the tang of fresh garlic and scallions being prepared for use as seasoning were wafting through the apartment. Mai was in the process of chopping up fresh vegetables to add to the wok and starting to get a little worried about her guests (food was never so good when it had to be kept warm, or worse yet, reheated) when the door banged open.

"Oh, man, I still can't believe you ate the whole thing, Arika!" Shiho's high-pitched voice rang out. "That was a couple's parfait, you know."

"Huh? It was?"

"Yeah, that's why it came with two spoons."

"I thought it was so that I could have one for each hand."

"Seriously? Come on, Mikoto, even you knew, didn't you?"

"Yes, but…I thought Arika's two-fisted eating technique was really cool! Especially when she chopped that melon wedge in half and caught a piece in each spoon! And I was sure that she'd get brain freeze like Miroku did from eating that fast, but she was totally okay!"

"I just feel bad for Kagutsuchi," Arika added. "His wings melted the ice cream in his ice cream soda, so he ended up with a carbonated frappe."

"…I feel bad for all of us."

"Huh? What do you mean, Mikoto?"

Mikoto pointed wordlessly towards the kitchen door. Of the girls, she had the best senses, not only of scent (detecting the aroma of impending dinner despite the lingering traces of vanilla and hot fudge on her tongue), but also that almost-psychic awareness of impending threat.

Mai, It must be said, definitely qualified as an "impending threat."

"You went out for ice cream!?"

"Eep!" Shiho squeaked. She'd thought she'd faced Mai's wrath before during the HiME Festival over consigning Mai's brother to be sealed up as a living battery for the Obsidian Prince and for generally trying to steal one of Mai's boyfriends. It turned out that she had no idea what "wrath" meant.

"I'm halfway through dinner for seven only to find out that five of you are gorged to burst on ice cream!?"

"H-hey, Arika and I don't even live here," Shiho tried to defend herself. Mai mentally awarded her half a point for trying to save her kouhai and not just her own hide. "You don't make our meal plans; we can eat what we like."

"Mikoto asked me to include the entire study group for dinner. Which meant that if you'd decided you'd rather have sweets, you should have left a note so I didn't spend all this time cooking a dinner nobody will eat!"

"Caw!"

"Sorry, Yatagarasu. At least someone still has some basic decency."

It was Arika who stepped forward and bowed in apology first. Her grandmother would have been proud of her for at least owning up to her wrongdoing.

"We're sorry, senpai. It was rude of us to forget about your plans. We just got so carried away with our talk of ice cream that we rushed out without thinking. And we thought we'd be back before you got home, so we figured we wouldn't have to tell you. I should have known better. Grandma always says snacking right before dinnertime is the worst because you always overeat since you're hungry for the meal you're supposed to have."

Mikoto's eyes widened and her face paled. Realization had struck the young woman and struck hard.

"Wait…do you mean…I won't be able to eat Mai's food because I stuffed myself full of ice cream?"

"…You just figured that out?" Shiho said.

"Mai's special dinner that she spent extra time making because she came home early?"

Unfortunately, Mikoto was realizing from the lead-weight feeling in her belly that had replaced the normal ravenous hunger the smell of Mai's cooking elicited that the idea of having a second stomach for desserts was just an idiom and not a real thing.

"Uh-huh."

"But…but then what was the point of going out? I had to pay for my ice cream and I like Mai's food better!" she wailed.

Arika patted her on the shoulder.

"I know, Mikoto. We should have known that we were being stupid when Yatagarasu stayed here. We were just being rebels without a caws."